


Denying soothes the soul

by CMDAK



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Hurt James Bond, Innocent Q, M/M, Q in denial, Stubborn Q
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-30 01:01:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11452716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CMDAK/pseuds/CMDAK
Summary: James, being the keen spy that he is, finds out one of his Quartermaster's secrets and begins to use it as a tool to get the other to clam up when the scolding went on for far too long. In retaliation, Q stops talking with him.





	Denying soothes the soul

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a short fic, a small distraction from something else that I am working on right now, but it ended up being longer than that one.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy!

“Why is it so hard for you to follow simple instructions, 007?” This was how Q welcomed the hard-working man who braved a storm of bullets and narrowly avoided getting run over by a tank in order to bring home a bloody USB stick. “Was I not clear enough when I asked you not to destroy your very expensive and, at that moment in time, one of a kind equipment that was especially crafted for the single purpose of surviving alongside you on this mission and bring down Medical’s expenses?”

 

No, no, he had. In fact, he had made it more than clear to him when he actually busted out a PowerPoint presentation. Adding insult to injury, he did that in front of a crowd that also included M and everybody clapped and hummed in agreement with the head boffin.

 

“007, am I boring you?”

 

“Actually—”

 

“Do both of us a favour and choose your next words very carefully,” Q warned, narrowing his green eyes as he rested his hands on his hips. “Or do I have also have to remind you that I am one of the people who gets to decide on what missions you can go on and that M is not that opposed to shipping you off to the middle of the sea where you’ll be alone and stuck for the next year if we were to get our way?”

 

It was such a pity that the man had that metaphorical stick shoved so far up his ass that it probably replaced his spine because not only was Q smart, he was also more than pleasing to the eye. He had wild, dark brown hair that always looked like he had spent hours in front of a mirror to get it to look as messy as it did – when, in fact, all he had done was roll out of bed and ran his hand through his hair to find his glasses – dark green eyes that became lighter the angrier he got, and a posh accent that didn’t make you want to bash his know it all head against a wall which was also soft enough to be something you wanted in your ear, but not so soft that it would put you to sleep.

 

“It’s not that you bore me,” James started and he was pretty sure that every weapon in the room was cocked and turned on him even though there was no one there to handle them because Q was that smart, “but I have a chewing from M scheduled in for five minutes ago.”

 

Q’s face turned a shade redder than before, his nostrils flared, and James braced himself for another at least fifteen minutes of redundant questions. But Q got distracted from his anger by his phone beeping and whatever text he got instantly calmed him down. “I am sure M will be more than understanding if I detain you for long enough to see how a real agent checks back in after a mission.” No, the text didn’t just calm him down. It gave him a reason to grin the way he did whenever something useful fell in his lap and James suspected that it was more ammo to embarrass him with.

 

And, of course, that ammo came in the form of the goody two shoes agent that everybody – just him – hated and namely, 009. Now, despite the rumours that went around MI6 just because Q closed an eye every now and then whenever he stole this or that device and never got into trouble or when he went off mission, the aforementioned agent was the one who got all the best and newest equipment with the Quartermaster’s blessings just because he brought them back in one piece.

 

“Oh, I apologize, Quartermaster,” the bloody nuisance said as he popped his head in the room after knocking. “I had no idea that you were busy; I’ll come back after you are done with 007.”

 

He would rather face an endless wave of underpaid mindless minions than to spend a single minute in the same room as the king of brown-nosers, but he did respect Q enough to allow him this little bit of form of punishment. And Q made sure to shove every bit of technology returned to him in his face, underlying just in how of a perfect condition they were before putting them in their respective places.

 

The whole ordeal lasted an unnecessarily fifteen minutes and Q still didn’t look like he was done making his day even worse than it already was. “Now, 007, what did we learn from the previous meeting?”

 

“That 009 either needs a doctor to surgically detach his lips from your arse or he desperately wants to get in your pants,” James drawled, dusting his suit off because he’d been in this bloody, lifeless, office for so long that he was frankly surprised that he didn’t have actual cobwebs on him.

 

“What?” Q asked in a slightly pitched voice, eyes wide.

 

Did he mention that Q also tended to be adorably unaware of certain things that happened around him? He really had to give it to the man’s unseen security detail for being so good at their job that the Quartermaster never got kidnapped in the rare moments in which he actually made his way out of his den.

 

But that would have to come later as James wanted to focus more on exposing 009. “Well, how else would you explain the way he acts?”

 

Q pushed his glasses back up his nose, a hint that he was switching from feeling annoyed to being uncomfortable. “You do know that he’s not the only one of your peers that doesn’t give me a headache combined with palpitations while out on a mission, right?”

 

James hummed and nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. “But he is the only one who’s a textbook yes-person.” Yes, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense because while they all respected Q in their own way, 009 was just too nice to him. The bloody agent even covertly asked Q out for lunch not five minutes and James just wanted to smack himself for somehow missing that.

 

“007, you have got to stop turning every situation into a sexual one,” Q growled, face turning a bit red again. “Not every agent is as debauched or unchaste as you are and they do not wish to couple with everything and everyone they see.”

 

That was an interesting way of talking. In fact, he talked as if he had never… Something suddenly clicked in James’ mind. “Q, are you a virgin?”

 

Q blanched – which, frankly, answered the question – and his voice went up a pitch. “What?”

 

“You know, is your cherry still un-popped? Did you not yet drop your skittle? Is your lawn chair still not broken? Are you still in possession of your v-card?” He continued to bombard Q with uncomfortable questions for a good minute because, truth be told, deep down he was a very petty man that liked to pay the other, young petty man with the same coin and because this was how they danced.

 

“I think you should leave, 007,” Q stuttered, avoiding looking the other in the eye. “It isn’t good to make M wait after blowing up—”

 

“You are a virgin, how pleasantly surprising and intriguing,” James interrupted the incoming rant, grinning when he saw the man choke of his words, mouth slightly open, eyes wide. “I take the silence as an open invitation for me to find my way out, correct?”

 

Q simple waved him away, still too embarrassed to look him in the eye. And James walked out of there grinning like the cat that caught the canary because he had finally found a way to get the other to cut him some slack and shut up without getting zapped, slapped, served with a restraining order alongside a VIP invitation to HR, or without getting the other man to despise him so much that he would never talk to him.

 

***

 

It turns out that asking Q about his sex life whenever he wanted to get scot-free for being just a tiny bit reckless during missions wasn’t his brightest idea ever. Sure, it worked just fine the first three times he did it since not only were their debriefings kept to a minimum of five minutes in which all the important information was exchanged but because it also meant that Q could finish his work sooner and leave at a decent hour, but the fourth time never came to be because his Quartermaster refused to even so much as look in his general direction.

 

But that was okay and more than perfectly fine because he foolishly thought that he could get Q to forgive him on his next mission. He could charm the other into forgiving him without actually saying those three little words, especially since he could make Q laugh without really trying over the coms – okay, so sometime it was a snort more than a laugh, but the frustration was sure to make him start explaining and that was one step closer to the nights at MI6 he loved the most because they were spent sharing a warm drink with the tired man.

 

Only, instead of the wild-haired Q, he was greeted by a shaking minion.

 

“Y-your current mission is a low-level one, s-so I am going to be your handler,” the nameless egghead started to explain without being prompted because it was a well-known fact that 007 could be a complete nightmare if he wasn’t paired with the correct boffin - aka, the Quartermaster. “Q said you had to accept this or else you’ll be suspended for insubordination,” he added in a higher  voice tone, flinching when the agent moved his hand to dust off  his jacket.

 

“Will your squeaky voice plague my ears for the rest of my probably short life?” James asked, hating the way this brainiac was squirming under his hard glare and trying to make himself smaller because Q would have glared right back at him and found at least five fancy ways of insulting him.

 

“W-well, if you have a hard mission or your current mission goes wrong and you’re in mortal danger, the Quartermaster would have to take over. But he said that if you do anything bad on purpose to drag him away from his current project or agent that he had assigned himself to, he will let you die,” the shaking leaf said in one go, looking a little blue in the face.

 

Cracking his knuckles, James grinned at the technician. “What would happen if my current handler happens to have a small accident?”

 

He’d get tasered, his mission taken away from him, forced to spend three hours in HR to convince everyone that he was only attempting to make a joke and lie through his teeth about how his actions were nothing more than a form of initiation into the double oh handler life, after which he got stuck in the care of a seriously angry R and further ignored by Q, one wrong word away from being indefinitely suspended.

 

His hope lied in dangerous missions, but karma appeared to be real thing and, in fact, a complete bitch as the seedy and deranged world of terrorists and insane people with lots of money and dreams of grandeur that went just perfectly with their God-complexes seemed to had completely calmed down and he was stuck with R’s angry growls and not so subtle jibes in his ear.

 

On top of that insult, his injury came in the form of being more aware of all the flies that buzzed around the innocent genius. There were at least three double oh agents who were being over-courteous and much too generous with their compliments which, even though Q more than deserved, would have never been uttered unless they didn’t ice a certain cake.

 

Some of the man’s minions were also just a tad too careful with the way they treated him and their eyes shone as they hanged onto his every word and breath. Sure, they all rushed to whatever Q ordered them to do, but James could easily tell the normal minions apart from the love-stricken ones and he suspected that the one most infatuated with him was the tea-maker.

 

Accounting was no less free of enemies than the rest of the departments, the bloody pencil pushers standing just a too close to Q whenever they explained god knew what about budgets and coming down much too often in the man’s lair with little gifts when they could save a lot of time by simply e-mailing him the documents.

 

“What’s wrong with Q? Because I refuse to believe that someone as smart as him can honestly be upset over some teasing. ” James exploded towards R as he dumped the charred remains of his equipment on the little silver tray that literally had his name on it. “Does he have laryngitis? Or is he so childish that he isn’t speaking to me because he wants to prove a point? A point that, because it was probably shoved in between a lot of ranting about the safety of this or that, I have completely missed?”

 

He knew what she was going to say even before the words came out of her mouth just by the way she arched her eyebrow. “If you give me one minute, I can get you the PowerPoint Q has created just in case the day ever came in which that finally dawned on you.”

 

Of course he did, the bloody brilliant and very petty man that always had to have the last word, of course he did. “I’ll break that CD in half before the CD tray fully opens,” he warned, cracking his knuckles.

 

The woman deflated a little as she pulled her hand out of desk, muttering a promise that she was sure only she could hear. “Q will get you to sit down and watch this thing one day, mark my words.”

 

“Yes, but I am not sure it will count as a win for him if I am dead.” He wasn’t as old as people thought he was. “Now, is Q really not talking to me anymore because I asked him about his virginity? Because if he’s allowed to hint at me whoring around every time I come back late from a mission, then I should get a free pass with this.”

 

R choked. “Out of the stupid things you could have teased him about, you picked that touchy and very taboo subject with him?”

 

Was Q really underage for sex talks to be off the table? Because if that was the case, he needed to take a long shower, question his tastes, take a psychiatrist up on their offer, and then drag the young man back to the best high school in the world where Q would get a second chance at a normal life.

 

“He’s been the Quartermaster for the past four years; he’s heard so many of us have sex that he can probably recognize us just by our grunts.” And if it did turn out that Q was underage, then he would need to drag each and every one of those agents into the bathroom to wash their mouths out with soap and make sure they joined him for the unwanted specialist talks.

 

The woman bursted into laughter, hitting the table with her fist as she struggled to explain through gasps what she found so funny to the few minions who had been braved enough to approach the obviously angry double oh and the possibly psychotic IT specialist.

 

“Are you done?” He asked as he checked his watch in place of cracking his knuckles as he would when his patience was finally gone with an enemy.

 

R suddenly turned serious. “Q’s never had the coms when either one of you agents are getting down and dirty. It has always been me or the special team he created just for these types of situations. The Major made it clear to everyone that we are not to talk about sex around him or tease him about that, but I guess you were missing on the day that meeting took place. Much the same way as the day everyone was given a brain.”

 

How Q could still be a virgin while working in this kind of environment was beyond him – strangely great news, nonetheless – but what baffled him even more was that Q turned out to be more Victorian than he expected him to be – at least that explained the old fashioned clothes, the posh accent, and why he always had a pinkie up when he drank his tea and thought that no one was paying attention to him.

 

Right, as if he was going to really believe that. “Why is he such a prude?”

 

“Q is not a prude,” R chided him, signalling him to follow her in her office. “Well, kind of, but not quite and, while I would normally tell you to get stuffed because I think you’re a right bastard, I feel as if it is my duty to explain why Q freezes up the way he does when sex is brought up.” She also hoped that the story would also get the agent to back off with his other teasing and be a bit more considerate when he teased him for the type of clothes Q wore.

 

Although, she feared that this might backfire. What if 007 was more of a jackass than they originally thought? Or worse, what if he told Q that R has revealed what she had been sworn to secrecy? The man would never trust her to tell her with what he was poisoned, if that was to happen. “You know what? You don’t need to know anything besides the fact that’s a really bad idea to tease him about his lack of a sex life or sex in general,” she concluded and pointed towards the door.

 

James frowned and got more comfortable in the chair. “You cannot lure a spy in your office with promise of precious information, give him a taste, and then expect them to just leave, you tease.”

 

“The agent should take my word and do as he was told without need of more reasons,” R muttered, eyes narrowed.

 

“But the agent is curious and the agent will start to dig around until the agent finds what they are looking for and I-”

 

R grabbed his tie and tugged him forward, interrupting him mid-sentence. “Fine, if only because I can easily imagine you pestering Q into talking about it and ending up in even bigger trouble than you already are.”

 

She had done this to herself, opening her mouth without thinking, but she had done it out of sisterly love - stupid sisterly love, but love nonetheless. She tugged him closer still, the collar of his shirt digging into the back of his neck. “But if you dare to turn the information I am about to give you into new ammo against him, I will cut your balls off with a blunt knife and feed them to you while making sure that you live long enough to choke on your dick.”

 

The fact that she thought he would be cruel hurt more than remembering how painful it had been to get slapped in the balls with a thick, wet rope. “He’s my Quartermaster, I would never—”

 

R shoved a tablet in front of his nose. “You Googled synonyms for losing one’s virginity to make sure he stopped venting about how worried he had been over you and explaining all the horrible scenarios that cross his mind whenever something he slaved over in order to keep you alive gets destroyed. Don’t you dare look me in the eye and tell me that you wouldn’t stoop that low and expect me to believe you without the use of a painful promise.”

 

And that hurt more than when his body had been riddled with bullets and that time he was forced to take a bath with electric eels combined. “It was only playful teasing,” James said softly, barely managing to hide his embarrassment. “I honestly thought that he was just stuck on coming up with a good—”

 

“If one more lie comes out from between those lips of yours, you’ll die never hearing Q speak again as well as wondering why your Quartermaster is such a schoolmarm,” she interrupted him again, her voice cold enough to freeze the ocean.

 

“I will hold my tongue,” he said slowly, R sighing as the look in her eyes turned soft.

 

It was commonly know that out of all the agents, 007 was the only one who could make an apology sound like the biggest insult in the world if he was forced to make one in front of higher-ups or fake an allergic reaction in front of those he considered under him or his friends and R knew that him promising to keep his mouth shut was as close as anyone would get to the other apologizing for his words.

 

This made her feel pity for him for she was sure that his tongue will bring him easily avoidable death one day.

 

“Out of the two of us, you know best of MI6’s affinity towards orphans,” she started and James allowed himself a moment of sadness and pity for Q. He had hoped that this wasn’t the case with the young Quartermaster and in his mind he had painted him as bored son of a lord who simply decided to offer his genius to an agency that could put it to good use. “Q knows this as well.” Of course Q would because all the important pieces on MI6’s chessboard were without parents.

 

R went on to explain that, unlike him, Q never got to meet his parents as he was dumped in a covenant that doubled as an orphanage a few months after he was born. He wasn’t even sure when his birthday was or what his real name was because his parents didn’t bother to leave behind his birth certificate or any information about who they were and why he was abandoned.

 

Few children were ever adopted from there because of the remote location – so they clearly went out of their way to get rid of their kid, James thought as he cracked his knuckles – but Q claimed to have had a happy childhood as all the nuns truly loved the children they were in charge of and the children saw each other as siblings.

 

There was no horror story to tell, she was quick to add when she saw how the vein in James’ neck started to make its presence know, his eyes narrowed as he flexed his hands. Nothing bad happened to Q there and he wasn’t avoiding anything related to sex because of the dark thoughts that crossed his mind. It was simply because nuns will be nuns and no one really dared to think about sex education, let alone try to get anyone to teach it in schools.

 

“So, Q’s an abstinent nun,” James concluded in his usual joking manner because he never knew how to deal with sensitive information about something or someone he really cared about and R slapped him over the shoulder faster than he could blink. “Okay, than I could focus on a man of science believing that there’s an invisible man up in the clouds who judges people for having sex before one of his minions gives them his blessing.” Mostly because he didn’t really want to think of the nightmare he went through when he discovered that he was as straight as his hair.

 

R let out a long, frustrated sight. This double oh was more frustrating than she thought it was humanly possible and she was glad that she only had to deal with him when he was nothing more than a grunting animal lost in the thralls of passion. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you, you unbelievable arse,” she hissed, digging through Q’s project files to see if maybe the man had come up with something that could erase one’s memory.

 

“You have to admit that it’s very baffling!” Q was a god in his own right if you took into consideration all the programs and nifty little gadgets he created – just because he failed miserably at holding on to one, it didn’t mean he disconsidered them. The man even had a bunch of followers, much like all the gods of the various religions that existed on earth, and ignored the MI6 rules as much as he did, so it blew his mind that Q allowed himself to be restrained by poetic words from a half-decent ancient novel.

 

“Did you miss the part about the nuns being horrible at talking about the act?” R asked slowly, opening a laptop to her right just so she could slam it shut because chucking one’s computer out the window was frowned upon by Accounting. “Bottom line, don’t touch that subject with him and keep your innuendos as confusing as possible.”

 

James frowned. “You mean, he doesn’t laugh at them because he doesn’t get them?” That possibility made him happier than it should, mostly because he was covertly putting the moves on the man with their help and he thought he simply wasn’t getting anywhere.

 

“To be honest, Bond, he wouldn’t laugh at them even if he did get them. He’s sex-illiterate, not a vapid blonde wanting to jump your bones.”

 

***

 

The second Bond walked in, Q felt a grave disturbance in the force. He didn’t stride in exuberating confidence or with that know-it-all smile of his, but kind of hunched and looking almost apologetically at him.

 

“I hope you’re having a pleasant Sunday, Quartermaster.” Even the way he was being greeted gave off a feeling of impending doom. “I had one of your most trusted minions make you your tea.” Q subtly started to check the cameras to make sure that nothing was on fire inside the building and to check in on the man’s car. “I also stopped by that vending machine just outside your main lair and got you tuna sandwich because they said on the news that the wind will be picking up later today.”

 

Q fixed his irritated glare n the agent, pushing the offered sandwich out of his face. Bond tried again, wiggling it in front of him and asking if it was not to his taste, but Q had long decided that he was going to continue to give the other the silent treatment until he either apologized or he felt like he had been punished long enough - or until he screwed up on a mission so bad that there was no other way of bringing him back outside of a box.

 

And then Bond opened the bag and made to take a bit out of the wretched thing, so Q’s hand shut out and stopped him. “As an unwritten rule, everyone avoids the food from that machine and I suggest you do the same unless you want to intimately get to know the new Medical team.” No boffin could forget the great food poisoning of 2016 in which 6 of his best people ended up spending the night in Medical while MI5 ended up getting involved because Tanner believed that someone had turned traitor and attempted to rid themselves of MI6’s brain – it actually turned out to simply be a case of neglect on behalf of their suppliers.

 

“And he speaks,” James muttered as he sat himself in the chair right next to Q despite not having been invited, a triumphant smile on his lips. “So, what are you working on?”

 

“Agent repellent,” Q grumbled, moving his chair so that he was showing the other his back.

 

James simply walked around the table and brought his face as close as he could without outright gluing it to the motherboard Q was working on. “It looks-”

 

“Just tell me what you want,” Q snapped. The device he was currently working on demanded his full attention as it was not only delicate, but expensive as well. He had fought accounting nail and tooth on getting the necessary funds to pull this project off and he would be damned if he’d allow a bored Bond to distract him.

 

“I am aware of the fact that I crossed a boundary and I simply am trying to make up for it.” James explained honestly. “I also know that you tend to forget that food is needed and I assumed that, being Sunday and you being at work, meant that you wouldn’t be averse to fish based meals.”

 

Q let out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do I want to know how you pried that information from R? And I expected you to do enough research to know that it’s Fish Friday and No Work Sunday.”

 

“I have made a note of that,” James said with a smile forming on his lips, getting comfortable in the chair he had pulled up next to Q, nose stuck in his phone. “I have also found a restaurant that’s fish exclusive—”

 

“Do not live under the wrong impression that I have time for your foolishness, agent,” Q interrupted him, side glancing at James and just loving the way he tensed up as if he knew of the words that were next to be spoken. “Nor that  your nosing around in your Quartermaster’s private life and your line crossing have been forgiven.”

 

“Understood, Quartermaster,” James said promptly as he got up from the chair and made a beeline for the door stopping mere millimetres  away from it. “I will do my best never to cross the line and I will never dare to bring your past in an insulting or joking manner, nor acknowledge it outside of emergencies in which you are frozen or unless you bring it up first.”

 

Q would not stand for anything less, but it still felt nice to hear that the other was aware of that. “And for future knowledge, I consider Chinese takeout as the only acceptable apology food.”

 

Not two hours later, he was sorting through about twenty boxes from three different high-class Chinese restaurants – that didn’t actually deliver – in search for his absolute favourites because Bond never did anything half-assed. There was also a cup of lukewarm tea that was much too weak and way too sweet for him to be able to stomach it down on the desk with a note from the aforementioned agent explaining that he had tried his best and that, if a boffin with blond hair and thick rimmed glasses told him that he had been hissed at, it was nothing but a lie.

 

But that didn’t mean he fully forgave the man for his harsh words and while he had started to talk with him again even during the small missions, he still gave him the cold shoulder. R suffered the same treatment and that did not go missed by the higher management who wasted no time in forcing the woman enter a closely watched vacation and calling Q in for a meeting.

 

“I recently became aware that due to the chaotic circumstances around your advancement in the Quartermaster position and I wish to make it clear that you have full control of who you hire, for how long, and to fire them when you feel that they have been compromised,” M said in one go, nodding his thanks to Eve for silently nudging a glass of water closer to him.

 

“Thank you for your concern,” and also for not calling me here to discuss how I managed to slightly go over the huge budget you approved without a second glance, because this is the last thing I needed on this horrible day in which all the agents just had to tug on my virtual sleeve and a foolish child tried to hack in our servers, “but I had a conversation about that with Major Boothroyd as soon as the doctors said that he could have visitors.”

 

“Good, then we can proceed with officially stripping her of her title,” another suit spoke up, the others nodding in agreement while Eve fixed Q with worried eyes. “Tell me, Quartermaster, do you think we’ll have any actual problems detaining her if we don’t have a double oh on site?”

 

“Wait, you’ve got it all wrong,” Q said quickly, phone in hand, ready to block everyone’s cell reception before they could have R arrested. “The reason for her current predicament has to do with how friendly and tongue-lose she decided to be with 007.”

 

It was at this point that M ordered everyone that wasn’t Q out of the room so he could explain to the young man why he was put in the awkward position of trying to find a way not to suspend him for misuse of power. “Q, everyone is well aware of the fact that you are the youngest person in our history to have held such an important position and for that, I did my best to officially look away whenever the protocol wasn’t followed. However, if you’re going to allow jealousy to get the best of you, then I have no choice but to suspend you until a psychiatrist says that you are good to come back.”

 

Q blinked slowly, tilting his head to the side as his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Excuse me, sir, but of whom am I jealous?”

 

“Of—” M stopped himself before he could say a name, shaking his head as if he had finally remembered something. “Can you tell me exactly how R got too friendly with 007?” He wanted to ask Q if he had walked in on them doing something unspeakable, unsanitary, and unsafe from all points of view, in a laboratory or in his office, but he suspected that it was something much more innocent.

 

“Could we keep it off the record as it would technically count as leaking private information?” Q asked carefully, relaxing a bit when M nodded in agreement. “She disclosed my past to the agent without my approval so she could get him to stop asking me about the state of....” He trailed off and coughed, clearly uncomfortable of what he was about to say next and one didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what it was.

 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, current M - as he thought of himself in annoyingly childish situations such as this one because his doctor said that it will help with his ulcer if he took a few steps away from what was annoying him and calmed down - wondered how the old dragoness had managed to live such a long, fruitful life without ripping out her hair. “A formal complaint towards the agent via HR is sure to teach him a lesson,” the man lied between his teeth and Q knew it.

 

“The agent is also suffering the consequences of his actions, do not worry, sir,” Q assured him and hoped that he wouldn’t be asked how exactly—

 

“I dread to ask this question, but I am bound by my promise to Olivia to do so even if we are off the record, so please tell me how are you exactly doing that and if I need to worry about anything.”

 

The old nun that always tended to their various scratches, sicknesses, and bruises would gently point out that his prayers weren’t being answered not because God wasn’t real, but because his current predicament could have been easily avoided if only he had made another choice, but young Q always took it as more evidence that God didn’t exist because he couldn’t quite imagine a loving parent knowingly allowing his children to do something that would result in them harming themselves. Adult Q was an atheist, but was still disappointed when his pleas to the invisible higher power went unanswered because he secretly loved to be proved wrong.

 

“Prior to a conversation we had before R’s involvement was discovered, I had ceased talking to him outside of important missions and while I am more inclined to return his greeting now, he is still banned ” Q said in as a dignified manner as he could. 

 

Thankfully, M dismissed him and he was allowed to return to his branch where he had to assure his minions that everything was okay and that no, they won’t be getting a new R or/and new Q and could they please go tend to their agents or does he have to put everyone currently buzzing around him on an improvement plan?

 

It took him two whole hours to get back to his office and when he finally sat down on his chair and rested his head on his desk, sighing in both relief and frustration, James Bond almost gave him a heart attack by starting to speak. “In my defence, I was sure that you would see me when you entered your office or that you would at least smell the food I brought, so maybe don’t threaten to put a bell around my neck?”

 

“I am so tired that I fear my brain needed a few moments to realize what a bell would accomplish, Bond,” Q admitted, rubbing his temples as he closed his eyes, his stomach starting to rumble when he finally registered just how good the food smelled.

 

“MI6 is buzzing with the fact that you’ve been called in an impromptu meeting with M, although the reasons as unclear and people are currently placing bets on anything from you getting R pregnant to explain why she suddenly went on vacation to you being part of Spectre,” James explained without being prompted. “No one put any money on that last one,” he added before Q’s feathers could get ruffled.

 

Q snorted, lazily digging through the bag filled with the boxes of Chinese food “And you’re presenting me with this bribe in order to find out the real reason, place a bet on that, and win the pool?”

 

Chuckling, James waited for Q to pick out his favourite meal before pulling out a random box. “No, this is another peace offering slash bribe since tomorrow I am going on a mission and I would prefer it if you were my handler even though it’s a simple bait-and-switch one.”

 

“I’ve updated the roster to reflect that, didn’t I?”

 

Maybe he should have brought him a pillow and a blanket instead of food. “The name next to mine is completely unknown to me, which almost makes me miss R,” he said slowly and Q looked like he was in deep thought for a moment before nodding to himself.

 

“This must have been an oversight on my end because I am back as your handler on all missions,” he muttered, ditching the food in favour of  his computer.  “But it’s too late to make any changes to this, so he’ll be guiding you for this one.” He glanced up at the man and saw how put out he looked, but since he was keeping his mouth shut and seemed to be accepting of his fate, Q decided to throw him a bone. “This will be done under my supervision, of course, as I have no agent assigned to myself and I wish to see if he could handle being part of the double oh support program.”

 

James nodded in appreciation and they both continued to eat in silence and lost in their own thoughts, Q making a mental list of the proper equipment that the agent would need just to compare it with what his minion would come up while the other was satisfied with watching the faces the deep thinking and extremely tired man was making.

 

A thought crossed Q’s mind in regards to the agency that Bond was about to infiltrate and made to ditch the food yet again for his computer, but the agent leaned over the cluttered desk and grabbed his hands. “I think you should go home and rest since I’m quite a handful,” James whispered and gave the thin hands he could easily break without trying a gentle squeeze. “Tell the egghead that’s my babysitter your hunch and let him worry about it and prove that he’s got what’s needed to make it as a handler.”

 

Q hesitated for a moment, liking just a bit too much how warm the calloused hands were, before shrugging them off so he could turn off his computer. “I really hope I won’t regret listening to you.”

 

“Have you ever?” James asked with a grin, holding the door open for him it a mock-gentleman manner.

 

“I think I have a PowerPoint presentation for this.”

 

James rolled his eyes and dragged the younger man out the door. “Of course you do, Q, of course you do.”

 

***

 

The weather, especially in London, tended to be cold and dreary which Q actually preferred despite always looking like a drowned cat since he still somehow always forget to bring an umbrella with him and he was caught off guard by the rain. But every now and then, the sun insisted on reminding everyone that it could exist without clouds covering it and it melted everyone who was unlucky enough to not have listened to the morning weather news and dressed like they usually did.

 

“I hate this bloody day,” Q murmured, tugging on his black tie in an attempt to pop open that annoying button that was exactly on his shirt’s collar without ending up looking like he had just haphazardly thrown the first clean thing he found on himself. “Why do they even have this button here?” He turned to ask Eve, the woman lowering her eyes, lips quivering. “I swear that whoever invented these things had a very particular kink—”

 

“Darling, we can go if—”

 

“No, no,” he interrupted Eve, crossing his arms over his chest. “M _insisted_ we do this,” he covered his ears as the US soldiers made damn sure to waste 21 bullets. “So we will do this and I will get sunstroke just to spite him.”

 

When the song started, he lowered his head to check on his black trousers that were just a tad too long and see if he could count the grass stains yet or if he had to walk around in this unhappy field a few more times until that was possible. And lo and behold, he could easily spot at least three and this was his best suit so this day officially couldn’t get any worse.

 

“Darling, you have to take the flags,” Eve whispered in his ear, wrapping her arm around his shoulders while R started to rub his back.

 

He accepted both the American and the UK flags, hugging them to his chest as he watched the empty coffin being lowered into the ground and he continued to consider this whole charade stupid and useless. Bond had been MIA for just three months and everyone should know by now that the twat was immortal and he liked to go on long vacations without letting anyone in on his plans after huge explosions because he was a drama queen.

 

“Q?” Bill Tanner’s worried voice came from behind him and he realized just then that someone was holding an umbrella over him as the weather had reverted back to its usual way of being. “Q, I’ll drive you home and Eve is insisting on making sure that you have something to eat, so she will cook for you,” he continued to explain slowly, forcing him to turn away from the grave and start walking towards the running car. “M has already signed your one week vacation, but if you feel like you need more—”

 

“I don’t need any,” Q grumbled, hugging the flags tighter to his chest when someone made to take them away. “He was in the _UK_ navy, so why did the US embassy sent over an honour guard?” Wait, were they sure that’s what they really are? He hadn’t been allowed to run a background check on anyone who attended the fake funeral, so maybe the agent was working with the CIA on something again and the soldiers were actually henchmen of whoever Bond had pissed off this time and they wanted to be sure he was dead. “He’ll pay for my dry cleaning when he comes back.”

 

Bill’s wife gave him a tight hug and R squeezed his hand. “We’re here for you, honey,” Eve told him from the front seat and the comforting words pissed him beyond belief since Bond wasn’t really dead and the farce to shake off the mobsters that were surely after him was going too far.

 

After he was assured that everyone will drop by the following day to check on him, Eve lead him to his own apartment and carefully sat him down in a chair like he was some kind of invalid before starting to buzz around his kitchen. Q had maybe two minutes of complete silence in which he enjoyed the loving way his cats rubbed against his legs before Eve started to rant about the state of his kitchen – or something similar; Q wasn’t really listening to her.

 

“Don’t take this as an offence since this is the best homemade meal I had in quite a long while, but I’m going to bed not,” he announced after he had taken just a bit of whatever the woman had cooked.

 

She looked like she wanted to tie him down to the chair and shove the food down his throat as he had started to skip quite a lot of meals since Bond went on his unofficial vacation – or undercover mission – but she forced herself to smile. “Of course, Q. I’ll just cover everything and close the kitchen so your cats don’t get to it even though I already fed them.”

 

Q snorted when he noticed that the cats returned the glare Eve had sent them and leaned down to scratch them behind their ears. “Thank you for your help, Eve,” he said and walked her to the door, awkwardly staring at a spot on the wall in front of his apartment as the woman gave him a tight hug and let out a shaky breath.

 

“I live closest to you out of anyone,” not counting the three MI5 agents that were part of his security detail, but whatever, “so don’t hesitate to call me no matter the time if you need anything.”

 

Everyone was overplaying the grieving friend role and it pissed him off. “Goodnight, Eve.”

 

He tried going to work the following day, but the Tanners must have read his mind because they were knocking on his door even before he was done deciding that he still wasn’t hungry enough to eat. Before he could fake a cough, Mrs Tanner forced-happily informed him that he was invited to join them on their yearly Zoo trip and the hopeful look on the faces of her two children made it impossible to say no.

 

R was on babysitting duty the following day and she dragged him to the theatrical edition Lord of the Rings marathon. He tried to use his phone to resend a text to all of James’ burner phones since they were the only ones in the VIP lounge, but R quickly confiscated it and shoved a burger in his hands.

 

“I know it hurts, but if you don’t start eating properly again, you’ll end up in the hospital,” R warned him and Q ate the burger in less than two minutes and with a smile on his face just to prove her wrong.

 

A few friends outside of work were his chaperons for the rest of that week and they insisted on seeing more movies, visiting a few restaurants that had just opened and trying their best to make small talk, which angered Q. He was going to find out who had blabbed to them about the fake funeral and painted him as a grief stricken widow and he was going to either stick them in browser history checking and pop-up blocker developing until they die or turn them into moving targets for the agents in training.

 

The following week was started by Eve with ‘nice’ trips to the museum and encouragements to accept what had happened. His denial landed him in two more weeks of vacation which he spent in the care of minions that were also his friends, double oh agents that suddenly saw themselves as his older siblings, and a rotation of his babysitters from the first week.

 

The only person that had yet to sit him down and try to have a serious conversation with him was M, but that was quickly remedied on day one of his second month of forced vacation with a supposedly accidental meeting in the small convenience store that was just around the corner of Q’s apartment.

 

“I had no idea that you and your security detail shopped here, sir,” he muttered before returning to trying to pick the perfect watermelon. “I’ll be more willing to pay attention to you if you cut the crap, _sir_.”

 

M paid no attention to just how mocking that last word sounded because suffering people who were in denial about that lashed out at those who tried to help them. “I really do not have time to beat around the bush, Quartermaster, and I also respect you too much to put you through it yet again.” he said softly, grabbing the younger man’s hands to stop him from knocking on watermelons. “Bond is not on a mission so secret that you don’t even know about it because he’d either have long since contacted you back or because you’re that good of a Quartermaster.”

 

“Then he’s on a beach somewhere, getting a tan and enjoying—”

 

“Q, I understand that this is very hard for you to accept this because he’s the first agent you guided as well as the first one to die on you, but Bond is dead,” M interrupted his well-rehearsed line and the words started to echo in Q’s mind. “I promise that if we find the body, we’ll give him another funeral.”

 

When had he gotten back inside his apartment and why did he have a blanket around his shoulders? “My records show that he never contacted the Major about his unofficial vacations either, so the funeral and all of _this,_ ” he angrily waved at himself, “is a waste of everyone’s time and nerves.”  

 

A cup of chamomile tea was pushed in his hands and his boss sat down on the sofa next to him, patting his leg. “But he always told _you_.” His voice was uncharacteristically soft and that just made them more painful. “Q, for your own sanity, accept the fact that Bond is dead.”

 

“I’ll think about it,” he murmured and sometime between his cats purring in his lap and one more sip of his tea, he was left alone.

 

Sleep ended up eluding him that night as every time he closed his eyes, the prick was sitting in front of him, holding his hands away from the computer and giving him one more reason that he needed to add into his PowerPoint presentation. At around 3 in the morning, he hoped out of bed despite his cats’ protests with the intent of just walking around London until he got sleepy, but his feet ended up leading him to a nightclub.

 

As there was no line, he walked right in expecting it to be empty, but was surprised to find out that it was pretty packed. He was surprised that he still somehow had feet when he finally managed to get to the bar because it felt like at least a hundred people had stepped on them and he knew without a doubt that his sides and back were covered in bruises from all the people that seemed to dance with their elbows more than with their bodies.

 

“Don’t suppose you have spirytus Polish Vodka?” He yelled after Googling the strongest alcoholic drink on his phone and the bartender shook his head with a confused look on his face while pointing at an electrical board above the bar which showed the drinks the house served. “Okay then, straight vodka then and keep them coming until you can no longer serve me.”

 

“Pay upfront and I’ll serve you for all the money you gave me,” was the bartender’s counteroffer and Q liked it so much that he gave the man a hundred quid even though he knew he was going to pass out way before that money was spent.

 

Proof of that was that at drink number something, the music was a high pitched sound in his ears and the world around him was nothing more than a colourful blur. Also, at that number, he decided that he no longer liked vodka and he wanted to try that blasted drink Bond always had. “Do you know how to make a Martini…” he trailed off and frowned, the memory slipping away from him before he could finish the order. “Wait, both verbs started with an ‘s’, I am sure of it.”

 

“Shaken, not stirred?” Someone offered.

 

Q laughed as he nodded, hitting the bar with his hand. “That’s what the bastard had! Give me one of that!”

 

The drink disappeared as soon as he was presented with it and Q felt like he had just drank water after so much vodka. Then again it made sense for an agent to have something as weak as that so they couldn’t get drunk in the middle of a mission. “But I am not doing that right now, so let’s switch back to vodka,” he slurred out loud and though the bartender started pouring him some vodka, a cup of hot, black liquid was presented to him. “Wasn’t vodka clear a few moments ago?”

 

“I think you need coffee,” the martini knower shouted in his ear as he shoved some money in his hand.

 

The connoisseur – quick mental note of how much he hated writing that word because he kept typing it as ‘croissant’ – clearly did not know that much about people. “I’m in IT, not prostitution,” he explained and counted the money, getting even more annoyed. “And I think I’m worth way more than fifty quid, thank you very much.”

 

“That’s your change, sir,” the bartender explained with clear annoyance in his voice, scurrying off to the other side of the bar before Qs could try to give him back the money in exchange for more vodka.

 

“We had an agreement,” he shouted and made to follow the man only to find himself start falling from the chair. “You said you’d help me pass out!”

 

Thankfully the croissant – or was it ‘connoisseur? Ah, whatever – grabbed him with one arm right before he could become friends with the ground. “From my own personal experience, getting piss drunk sounds like a good idea to you right now, but you’ll regret it in the morning. And given that you can’t even keep your head up, it will be in your future self’s best interest to switch coffee.”

 

He was pretty sure that what was best for every version of himself was both of those strong arms getting him out of his clothes and a certain organ popping a fruit – which he was pretty sure it was some sort of berry. But was it a raspberry? Maybe a blackberry? Or a strawberry? “Oh, it was my cherry,” he happily exclaimed just as the cold air of the night-morning hit him in the face. “Say, I wouldn’t be so lucky as to bump into someone who is at last bi-curious, wouldn’t I?”

 

He couldn’t quite get what was being whispered to him but the fact that he wasn’t getting punched – men who were unsure of their sexuality reacted so violently when they found themselves in the same situations they put women in by being forward – and the fact that that he was pretty sure a bit of a tongue was slipped in there every other word, his hopes for being sexed up until he fell asleep increased.

 

“We can use what’s left of the vodka money to pay for the cab to wherever and then what’s left from that to get the very cheapest bottle of whatever from a non-stop,” he offered and since he was now being dragged towards the sound of a running engine, it looked like he hit the sexpot!

 

***

 

From the second he started to stir, it felt like someone had started to slowly drill a hole in his head. “I’m never drinking again,” he promised himself in a whisper and regretted opening his eyes, not because the light made his headache even worse –since the curtains were tightly shut – but because he did not recognize the room he was in at all.

 

He told himself not to panic as he took in his surroundings, ending up really glad that he was in a really fancy room, that there was no chain around his ankle, the lack of a dead body next to him was also a huge plus, as was the lack of an IV meant to keep him sedated and alive attached to his arm. What he didn’t really please him was the fact that he was only wearing his kickers, especially since he was either solicited last night or he solicited someone.

 

“Damn alcohol induced amnesia,” he grumbled and braced himself for that pain that he was supposed to feel in either his backside or lower back when he moved.

 

“Nothing happened to warrant that type of pain,” a painfully familiar voice whispered from the door and Q froze. “Although, as God as my witness, it was pretty damn hard not to the second you finally managed to pull your own pants off and fell on my bed in such a way that it looked like you were waiting for someone to anally take your temperature.”

 

If there was a God, when he turned around… When he turned around what? If He was real, then he would come face to face with a kind stranger that did not take advantage of a suffering man which confirms that he might be going insane with the grief he had denied for so long like everyone had said? Or if it turned out that the nun was real, would he lock eyes with the reason why he had stopped shaving?

 

“If you turn around and look at me, you’ll see that I am holding the key to a headache-free day,” the ghost continued to talk and then promptly proved that it had a physical form when it pulled the covers back on Q because he shivered. “Do you want me to take you home or do you want me to call anyone to pick you up?”

 

He was well aware of just pathetic he was about to sound and pictured that James found himself on the receiving end of such a fit many times during his long bed-hopping life, but he could not find it in himself to care a single bit because he felt like he was entitled to this meltdown.

 

“I want you to go back in time and call me to tell me that you are alive so I wouldn’t get suspended for two months while my sanity slowly slipped away from me,” he hissed as he turned around with the full intent of slapping the aspirin out of the man’s hand and start ripping him a new one, but his anger and rage quickly died down when he saw how the agent looked.

 

The man hand his left arm in a sling and bandages wrapped around his chest and although Q could easily tell by the smell of disinfectant mixed with aloe vera that whatever deep wounds Bond hand, they were still healing. Bond’s muscles were also less well-defined, but his body was still one that many would die for – to have both in the sack and as something to see in the mirror. He had a few band aids on his face and a scar from cut over his right eye that didn’t seem to affect his vision, but otherwise looked like his normal self.

 

“Being in a coma tends to affect one’s ability to make phone calls, Quartermaster,” he whispered softly and held out the pill for Q to take. “You can hate me with a pounding headache and a need to puke, or you can hate me _until_ you get that one headache you claim disappears the second I shut up.”

 

The silence that stretched between them was an uncomfortable one, James sitting down on the bed to allow Q’s trembling fingers to hover over the freshly changed bandages. When Q’s lip actually started to quiver, the agent pulled his distraught friend to the good side of his chest and dared to place his lips on top of his head, throwing the covers over them.

 

“You’re still slightly tipsy and mentally exhausted, Q, so you’re seeing things much worse than they really are,” James tried to reassure the younger man, smiling rather fondly at the angry glare that was being sent his way. “I admit  to fearing that I may never be on the receiving end of this anymore.”

 

“If you weren’t hurt, you’d also be on the receiving end of a slap.” His words lacked the required bite to instil fear, but that was due to the fact that Q was slowly starting to go into shock.

 

A light shiver passed through his body and then he was rocked by a stronger one, James using his good hand to rub his back in an attempt to keep him warm even as he wrapped his legs around him and then the blanket around them. “How about I start keeping a notebook of all the slaps, kicks, and whatever other forms of punishment you can think of until I get well enough to get them?”

 

Q was too tired to tell him just how much he liked the idea or that not only will he multiply everything in that notebook with at least five, but that he will also enrol him in the most boring classes he could find and for him to attend as well as make sure that he will be stuck babysitting the lowest of the low field agents MI6 had. But he wasn’t going to stop here; he didn’t know how else he was going to punish him and he couldn’t really think straight due to a combination of his bloody head still hurting and the agent’s heartbeat lulling him into the first, nightmare-free sleep since the last time the two of them talked on the coms, but it was going to be grand.

 

He woke up with his head still on the agent’s chest – the side that wasn’t hurt, of course – and realized that the warm breeze that kept tickling his ear was James’ breath. Q also became aware that James was a light snorer and if his blood wasn’t still boiling in anger, he would have recorded the man and lightly teased him about it until the agent stopped showing annoyance at that. However, since the more he stared at the man, the angrier he got, he silently rolled out of bed and, after reaching the conclusion that the bedroom did not hold anything of his, started digging around the apartment for his clothes and his phone.

 

Though they had known each other for over four years and, according to Eve, were good friends, neither one of them had visited the other’s apartment. The old M would have told him to count his blessings because the pesky agent always dropped in on her uninvited, but seeing that the agent’s own house smelled like disinfectant and was mostly empty because Bond seemed like he hadn’t bothered to empty the boxes that were gathering dust in the hallway, Q couldn’t really blame him for wanting to spend at least an hour in an actual home.

 

He was surprised to find that the fridge had more fresh produce than his own ever had and that there wasn’t a single bottle of alcohol in any of the cupboards – and yes, he was well aware that the kitchen would be the last place where he could find his clothes, but he was curious and working with spies had rubbed off on him.

 

Still, after he found his stuff neatly folded on the dryer that was gathering dust in the bathroom number two – which could be considered the ‘master bathroom’ given how big it was – he was respectful enough not to start digging through Bond’s closets and other three rooms that he suspected to either be completely empty or filled with more unpacked boxes.

 

Once dressed, he couldn’t leave the apartment without checking in on Bond and, even though he could hear him snoring, he took his pulse and listened to his heart beating. He supposed a psychiatrist would say that he was acting like this because, in his mind, the line that had to exist between an agent and a Quartermaster had long since been blurred and maybe even venture to say that he had feelings for the sleeping man, but what did those bastards know in the end?

 

Q got flooded with apologetic text messages from his friends, his department, and agents of all designation the second he opened his phone, but he could not find it in himself to grin or feel superior due to the headache that returned to him like a curse the second he set foot outside Bond’s apartment and it continued to grow stronger the further away he went.

 

And if the pain wasn’t enough to constitute this as a horrible day, when he finally got home, instead of being allowed by that deity that’s supposed to love each and every one of them equally to fall face first in his own bed and wallow in desperation at the memory of his actions towards the immortal agent on the previous night before rolling on the ground and turning into a sobbing mess of happiness and relief that  he was right, he came face to face with an R and Eve leaning against his door.

 

“I am too hungover and tired for anyone, especially the two of you when you’re working together,” he muttered as he slid R to the right side of the door so he could open it.

 

Eve rested his hand on his shoulder before he could disappear inside his apartment. “We could put him in the ground for you,” she said seriously, R cracking his knuckles before reaching into her bag and pulling out a tablet to showcase how 007 was going to be assassinated.

 

“Do you really want me to go through his funeral _again_?” Q asked and the two women visibly shrunk. “Plus, he was in a coma, so I am more than okay with giving him a pass for this disappearance act.” He actually dropped all his plans of revenge on the poor man since he really couldn’t be blamed for any of this, including how easily he had allowed himself to be distracted from his gut feeling, so he wasn’t lying just to get rid of his friends.

 

R pulled him into a tight hug – all his bones cracked and he felt like he was dying even more than before; but this was good because it helped him decide to never drink again as well as take 009 up on his offer to help him gain a bit of muscle mass – his cats nipping at his heels to get his attention. “Just give us a word and we’ll all help you erase those bastards from the face of the earth if Bond hasn’t done it yet,” she whispered in his ear.

 

Q patted her back until she released him and then shot the two women a tired smile. “I appreciate your support.” Translation: I will take you up on your offer as soon as I get back to my domain and expensive equipment which I will abuse to find out if those bastards are still alive and what it was that they held dear.

 

After he properly fed and apologized to his cats for leaving them alone, he took a quick shower and then finally collapsed in bed, clothes be damned. He rarely slept in the nude, but he had heard that if you had the right sheets it felt like you were floating – he’d realize that he didn’t when he saw the rash on his bum that was currently in development, but until then, he quite enjoyed the pleasant breeze that was washing over his naked body.

 

The feel might have resulted in a pornographic dream, but the insistent knocking on his front door combined with the doorbell ringing ensured that he didn’t remember anything. With a groan and a few choice words, Q jumped out of bed, carefully stepped over his still eating cats, and wrenched the door open. “What?”

 

James instantly forgot what he wanted to say, mouth falling open. “I think you lost some things there, Quartermaster,” he muttered, turning with his back at the naked man.

 

Q actually had to look down at himself to realize what the man was talking about and when it dawned at him that he had unwillingly flashed his co-worker, he slammed the door shut with so much force that a frame fell off the wall. “What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

 

“I brought Chinese food,” Bond said simply and held up the bags to the peephole just in case Q was glaring at him through it. “Tanner finally cracked and gave me the name of the restaurant you really like this time.”

 

Q’s stomach was pleased by the idea if the sound it made was any indication, but Q himself wanted to invent something that would either erase people’s memory or turn back time. “It was not necessary this time, but thank you.”

 

“I have to argue with you on that, Quartermaster.” He would also argue with the man on the security of his apartment seeing that he had just easily jimmied his door open. “Before you turn me into a pile of ashes with whatever overpowered Taser you have on you for breaking into apartment, please put something on since being nude in front of me clearly makes you uncomfortable and also take into consideration the fact that you’ve snuck out of my apartment two days ago.”

 

The man was making it impossible for Q to be angry with him. “I feel as if I’ve slept about an hour,” he admitted, pushing himself against the door when it slowly started to open. “I’m still not decent, you impatient twat!”

 

Bond fought back the urge to comment that, after the younger man had shoved his tongue in his mouth and planted images of the crazy things he could do with his tongue if there was enough room while he wrapped his legs around his middle and kept in perfect balance without the use of his hands, he would never be decent to him.

 

Wait, no.

 

Q stopped being decent after he had managed to figure out how to decode his TV – since he rarely used the apartment, he had the cheapest cable option available – with just the remote, blocked it on a porn channel and then started to slowly undress himself only to – thankfully – fall asleep just as he had managed to hook his thumbs in underwear.

 

How in the world was he a blushing virgin when he was sober and what God in the universe did he have to thank for Q not yet losing it when he was this drunk?

 

“Speaking of decency, can you fix my TV back so I’m not stuck on the porn channel 24/7?”

 

By now Q had covered himself in the biggest bathrobe he had stolen from the last hotel he had been in and he could easily go back to angrily wrenching the door open and shoving his finger in Bond’s face. “I’m not your—”

 

“You’re not my anything except my Quartermaster, I know,” the agent interrupted him, moving to the side to bring the bag of food closer to Q’s nose since his left arm was still immobilized in a sling. “However, you are also a hiss away from fainting, so how about you eat now and scold me later?”

 

Q stepped to the side to let Bond in and the agent wasted absolutely no time in making himself at home in his kitchen. “I don’t think we can save anything from your fridge,” he said even as he was half inside of it, dumping things that definitely weren’t supposed to be green in a trash bag. “I think it would be easier if you simply buy a new fridge. It’s a good thing I came by with food since I did hear that the wind will be stronger than usual in the following week and it would be beyond embarrassing for MI6 to lose their Quartermaster like that.”

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

James turned with a fake expression of worry. “My dear friend, don’t you remember that I am here to feed you?”

 

“No, what are you _really_ doing here?” Q asked again, resting his temple against his fist. “R or Eve or anyone from the countless babysitters I had for the past month could have dropped by to see if I was still alive and force feed me so what are _you_ , the famed double oh agent who cared so little for their superior that he broke into the apartment of his former Quartermaster when it was well known that he was out for the month with the chickenpox he got from his nephew because his car was making a funny noise…” He trailed off, frowning because he had forgotten where he was going with it.

 

“What I am really doing here,” James finished for him and sat across from Q at the small kitchen table, resting his good hand on top of his. “Firstly, in my defence, I was young when that happened and secondly, how could I not fight everyone in MI6 to check up on you when I am the reason why you are the way you are?”

 

Were his words supposed to be endearing or an insult? Because Q was leaning more towards taking them as a grave insult and he highly doubted that a senior double oh agent would be so horrible at making himself understood. But Bond truly looked like he was worried, so maybe he didn’t know how to act in a situation this outside of him comfort zone in the real world.

 

“Don’t give yourself that much credit, Bond,” Q said and ditched the other’s hand in favour of a work – he missed the warmth and the pulse that proved that Bond was really there, but he had shown weakness in regards to him for far enough. “Admittedly, had it been any other agent, I wouldn’t have questioned the need for a funeral.” He would have simply accepted the outcome, be depressed and angry for a while, and then give even more of himself to ensure that this would never happen to another agent again – or rather, to be sure that he would always be able to bring Bond back alive, if not in one piece.

 

The trust showed displeased Bond almost as much as it flattered him. “My luck will run out one of these days, Q.”

 

His appetite suddenly gone, Q put the fork down with a bit too much force, resulting in his cats flinching and bolting in the other room at the noise. “Yes, well, until I feel that has happened I refuse to waste my time in cemeteries so you best not slip into any more comas without letting me know first!” It was a ridiculous request, but that special filter between one’s brain and mouth seemed to have stopped working for Q.

 

James’ dismissive snort did nothing to calm him down and suddenly, the frail dam that was holding all his pent up feelings and fears broke and he slapped the food off the table as his whole body started to shake and threw his glasses against the wall because his vision had become blurry and he preferred to blame them instead of admit to himself that the hot streaks he was feeling down his cheeks were tears.

 

“The next time I feel that something is wrong, you can shove whatever you brought me up your arse and bugger off out of my office so I can cover everything! The next time I replace whoever is on the coms with you and I tell you to go back and face three guards, you won’t dare to so much _think_ of taking one more step in your original direction! And the next time I’ll second guess my gut feeling, feel free to smack me over the face because your life is in the balance!”

 

He wanted to scream some more even if his throat felt as if he had swollen broken glass and he wanted to bash his head against the wall until he was sure that he understood why a Quartermaster should never leave the mission of the world’s unluckiest agent in the hands of a newbie because not only had he been forced to accept the death of the person he _loved_ , but his poor underling had collapsed the second R confirmed that they weren’t picking up any vital signs. He wanted to do all of that and more, including looking himself in his office until he built a time machine, but Bond was kneeling on the floor with him, hugging him as tightly as he could with one hand and without hurting himself.

 

“I’ll never die with you on the coms,” James was whispering in Q’s ear over and over again, rubbing their heads together. “I can’t promise that I’ll never die, but when I go down I will take with me as many of them as I can and it will not be your fault because I’ll probably be home, in bed, half-drunk, alone, and without your soothing, velvety voice to guide me in my ear or your beautiful, green eyes watching my every move.”

 

“Not the time to pay me superficial comments, Bond,” Q hiccupped, rubbing his face against Bond’s shoulder to both wipe his eyes and scratch his nose. “I’ll pay for the dry cleaning.”

 

Chuckling, the man moved away a bit and used his sleeve to clean Q’s face as much as he could. “Sacrificing this thing is the least I could do for you.”

 

“Damned right, you bloody twat,” Q grumbled. “How did you manage to get dressed anyway? Did you fly over the pretty nurse that checked your vital signs, dressed your wounds, washed you, and made sure you had that good morphine IV was always full?”

 

So his jealousy was showing, so what? He, a grown adult man, had just broke down and cried at his inability to be perfect in front of an assassin, so this was nothing compared to that.

 

“A married, arthritic, 60-something straight man was my nurse and before you start accusing me of fraternising with the female doctor I had, she was the happily married wife, and not that I am ageist, but the couple wasn’t my type,” James soothed Q’s other fears, managing to sneak a kiss on his temple. “I managed to dress myself, but I wouldn’t mind having someone helping me.”

 

Sniffling and better cradling his head in the crook of Bond’s neck, Q quickly ran down a mental list of all the nurses in Medical that he thought they could hold their own against the stubborn and surely horny man. “If we take out of the equation all the nurses who would rather smother you with a pillow than with their ample bosoms—”

 

“How about you?” James interrupted him, drumming his fingers on Q’s chest. “I want you to dress me, undress me, help me out of the shower, and many other activities that are so much more fun when two people are involved.” He leaned back so he could look Q in the eyes and cup his chin. “Such us fighting games on the high-tech console you probably have lying around your living room and arm wrestling.”

 

“You have one arm in a sling,” Q pointed out slowly, making that adorable face he did when faced with conflicting data. “I’m not saying that I could take you down in an arm wrestling match just because you’re not using your dominant arm, but I am pretty sure that you’re not supposed to do anything that might put any kind of strain on your body right now.”

 

“So I am guessing that the other types of wrestling are also off the table?” James was thinking of a _specific_ type, but he wasn’t going to point that out or hint on at it until it became obvious and ruin everything. Not when Q’s lips were this close to his without alcohol being involved. “Q, I know I promised—”

 

What little space that was left between them disappeared instantly and James’ mouth was invaded by a slightly spicy taste mixed with a bit of tea. He much preferred this one over that of vodka and martini, even if the kiss was still clumsy and ended too fast.

 

“Trying to jog my memory here,” Q lied, quickly moving away from the still kneeling agent and starting to clean the kitchen while his cats nipped at his heels. “I’ll restock your automatic feeder in a moment, darlings. And your water,” he added when Turning let out his extremely testy meowl. “Just let me clean my mess first.”

 

He was afraid to look behind him, afraid that he’d see Bond laugh at him, afraid that he’d made a fool of himself for the second time in less than a month and this time he couldn’t really blame alcohol. And he was aware of how ridiculous everything was since he was an adult man, but certain fears never really left you, did they? There was no magic that happened once you reached a certain age to make you stop being anxious about things – in fact, Q would argue that an opposite magic happened and you started fearing even more things than before, which was a really crappy deal if you took into consideration the fact that you were slowly nearing your death.

 

Bond, however, did not plan on letting the sober kiss be glanced over so fast. “I don’t mind help you with your memory some more if you want,” he offered, wrapping his good arm around Q’s middle and pushing against his back as much as he could. “I could be that one-night stand you seemed to be searching for that night and then go back to our usual banter, of that is what you want.”

 

Not knowing how to react, Q reverted to jokes. “You’re saying that because you need to go to the bathroom right now and you want me to unzip your pants, aren’t you?”

 

“Now that you mention it, I do have to go to the bathroom,” he hugged Q tighter before he could slip away from him, locking him in place with a kiss on the back of his neck. “But I’d want you near my zipper even if I had the use of both of my hands.” Not the best of his lines, but he ever used those with people who generally interested him and Q deserved nothing less than his true self.

 

Q tried not to laugh and it came out like a hiccup mixed with a choke. “Okay, even I realize that you’ve just asked me for a hand job. Which I doubt you’d be getting even if I were drunk,” probably because his coordination was horrible when he was like that, not necessarily because he didn’t want to… Bond was very pleasing to the eye even in this state and his suits never left anything to the imagination and he would want to, but…

 

Seeing just how red Q’s ears turned, James started to worry that he might have gotten a fever and quickly turned him around so he could push his lips against his forehead. “I should have driven you home that morning,” he muttered, starting to guide him back to where he thought the younger man’s bedroom was. “I have to go to Medical today and R had scheduled you in for a check-up as well, but I am sure MI6 is more than willing to send a unit to the Quartermaster’s house if you have a fever.”

 

“I don’t have a fever,” Q said, but his words fell on deaf ears. “Bond, I am not red in the face because I am sick,” he tried again, but since the other was still ranting about how many legs and arms would be broken on top of him suing them if they ended up being forced to go all the way to Vauxhall to get medical care, he dropped it. “You’re walking us into a closet; my bedroom is the door on the left.”

 

Bond still ended up opening the closet door and ending up with a bump on his head thanks to the led pipe that fell on him. In turn, Q ended up guiding James towards his bedroom, pushing the frozen bag of peas he had no idea he had in his fridge – at last, he hoped that’s what they were – against the man’s head, and calling MI6 to ask for a mobile Medical unit.

 

“They’ll be here in about twenty minutes,” Q said as he shone a flashlight in Bond’s eyes to check for a contusion or concussion like he saw the doctors do on multiple occasions. “Did you… Wait, let me google symptoms for whatever you might get when you bump your head.”

 

Bond wanted to take the pipe and hit himself with it over the head repeatedly because he had come to Q’s house to check and see if he was okay and then put the man’s worries to rest and apologize as best he could , but ended up scaring him again. “Q, there’s no need for that; the bump felt like a light tap and nothing else.” He wrapped his hand around Q’s thin wrist when it became obvious that he was being ignored and tugged him forward, nuzzling the top of his head. “Q, I will not die by your hand or anything you own or do, so relax.”

 

“Promise?” Q demanded in a weak voice, rearranging himself in such a way on Bond’s chest that he could hear his heart beating without hurting him. “I know it’s a stupid request, but I only ever ask you to bring my equipment back in one piece and yourself in as good of a condition as you can, but you never do, so—”

 

“I promise.” He placed a kiss on top of Q’s head and started to gently massage the back of his neck, hoping to ease some of the tension that was there.

 

“Lunch,” Q muttered suddenly, tilting his head back to look Bond in the eyes. “You won’t get a hand job from me,” he covered Bond’s mouth to keep him from interrupting, “but I will go to lunch with you.”

 

He felt Bond’s grin against the palm of his hand.


End file.
